Sunday, March 11, 2007

You Are The Cheese

We're, what, only two and a half weeks into Lent? And WonderBaby has already broken her vow to abstain from imitating the Pope.

In the hungover fog that was yesterday, I completely forgot to acknowledge the wonderfulness that is this whole Thinking Blogger Award thingie. I mentioned it the other week, when I thanked OTJ, Mom-NOS and Kyla for their awesometasticness in naming me a Thinking Blogger. But then came the ever-fabulous Punditmom and my good friend Mad Momma with more thinky-linky love, and I realized that I have been woefully, unforgivably remiss in not paying this forward.

For this, I apologize. To the entire parent blogosphere, and beyond, because the whole damn thing - the whole damn lot of you - make me think. Which is saying something, because after more than a decade of studying philosophy, a few years teaching philosophy, and two and half years practicing the mostly (mostly) unphilosophic art of wrangling a WonderBaby, you'd think that I'd be pretty much mind-numbed. But no, far from it: every evening, after the nightly post-structuralist deconstruction of the works of Margaret Wise Brown, and after setting aside my dog-eared copies of Machiavelli's la Mandragola, Rousseau's Emile and Vanity Fair (Graydon Carter, not Thackeray), I turn not to the sweet oblivion of reality television - I turn to you. (Okay, most nights I turn to you.) And you always, unfailingly, make me think.

I've lost track of who has or hasn't been tagged with one of these awards. You all deserve one, and so I hate narrowing it down. But it seems to me that the men of the mom'n'poposphere have been seriously under-represented in these awards, and so I'm going to direct my attentions to them: AdventureDad, MetroDad, DadGoneMad (whose original post at the Blogfathers about his daughter's turbo-shit started me thinking early and often about the joy that is the shit of our offspring and remains, for me, the gold standard of potty philosophy), Laid-Off Dad and, of course, Dutch of Sweet Juniper. These were the first dad-bloggers on my bloggy reading list, and they remain on that (ever-growing, ever-crowded) reading list, because they never fail to make me laugh or think or - best - both.

Hooray for thinking women! Hooray for thinking men! And hooray for that photo of Wonderbaby as the Pope which will surely go down as one of your all time favorites ever in the world for all of eternity.

What is the concept of "thinking" you speak of? Wait, I remember it - it was the thing I did before I had Bumper. Thanks for reminding me that I'm still able to do it (just on less sleep). No seriously, thank you for stimulating the ol' synapses with the posts.

Yikes, go away for a few days...I am still laughing about the ABC's. And the deep questions, maybe later in the week when the laundry mountain is a little lower. And cheese on the head, mine liked to stick their Mum-Mums on. I miss those days sometimes.

Even though cheese makes some people constipated and...others...well...have to suffer the tragic consequesnces of being lactose intolerant? I'll take that Cheese Award anyway. Even though I'm not cool enough to be at SXSW and my cousin's daughter works as an intern there and I live a scant three hours' drive. I'll take the cheese.

Thanks for the compliment. And I'd just like to say that you are, as always, the true thinking man's woman, Catherine. Yours is one of the few voices that really does make me think and I love the courageousness of your brilliant mind.

And need I say anything about the unbelievable cuteness of WonderBaby?

When I was in HS, around Lenten time...I'd see kids with a dot on their forehead and didn't know if they knew that they had a black mark on their forehead. What do I know being a Buddhist all my life. It's a good thing I didn't open my big mouth and tell one of them to wipe that black mark off of their forehead.